His Wife by Christmas

With memories of 'gold digger' still haunting her waking hours, Charlotte Park knows that before this Christmas, she must finally clear her name. And the only way to do so is come face to face with her husbandachingly gorgeous Ren Townsend once again.

It may have been three years, but the fire still burns as brightly between them. And Ren can't take his eyes away from his wayward wife. Only they have unfinished business, and as the secrets of their marriage are unveiled Ren and Charlotte are given a chance to have just one more night .

Chapter Five

Ren knew he shouldn't have said it, but the word hung there between them anyway, shifting this entire conversation onto unsteady ground. Liar.

Charlotte went terribly still. Then she set her wineglass down in front of her with exaggerated precision, like that could keep the storm that was building between them at bay.

"Do you want to discuss lies, Ren?" she asked, in that deceptively soft voice that he knew was Charlotte at her most furious.

And Ren thought for a moment that he might break apart with all these things he wanted. They all seemed to bend and sway in the air before him, until he couldn't distinguish them. Until he could see nothing at all but Charlotte.

The way he always had.

"I want any number of things," he said, and he could tell how rough he must have sounded from the way she jerked against her seat. "A different father, for a start. A different marriage to a different woman."

"A pity, then, that you're stuck with being the sole heir to the vast wealth your father accrued and the next CEO of Townsend Consulting. Pardon me while I dig out my violin and play a soulful dirge for the things you want that you can't have, you poor thing."

"I'm selling it."

She regarded him for a long moment, and he opted not to examine the fact that this was the first time he'd said that out loud. Here, in this deserted pub on a winter's evening in the lonely little village where his father had been born and laid to rest. To his ex-wife, who had left him and now claimed to hate him.

It was very nearly poetic.

"Have you ever heard of Cayo Vila?" he asked before Charlotte could ask him the questions he could see brewing in her gaze. She blinked.

"Of course. He owns the Vila Group and half the known world."

"He's a machine. He's the perfect person to take over Townsend Consulting. He'll run it the way the old man only wished he could."

"Meaning, with absolutely no regard for his employees? With the assumption that their role in life is to serve at his whim?"

"Something like that." He laughed, and he didn't have to see it in her expression to know that the sound was far too hollow. "My mother grew up in Cayo Vila's village, somewhere off in the hills of Spain. She said he was the only person from that place who ever made something of himself, and also that she would have dated him if she'd been younger." He could feel his smile was much too brittle. "I can't tell you how moved I've always been by that story."

"Ren." His name on her mouth felt like a kiss, and he hated how much he wanted that. How much he wanted her, despite everything. "I think perhaps you're grieving."

"What could there possibly be to grieve? Malcolm Townsend was very possibly the worst man I knew."

"He was your father," she said simply. She pressed her lips together for a moment, as if struggling with something, but then sighed slightly. "Sometimes I think it's harder, in some ways, when someone dies while things are still so bad. There's no hope, then, is there? It can never be fixed."

"He could have been immortal, Charlotte, and there would still be no fixing anything with him."

"I know that," she said quietly. "You know that. But that has nothing at all to do with how it feels."

And Ren didn't know what was worse. To remember how much he'd always wanted her, or this: remembering why he'd loved her so much, he'd been blind with it. He didn't want this, he thought wildly. He didn't want this

"I can think of an excellent way to work off all this excess emotion," he said in a low drawl that he knew would make her flush. When it did, he smiled. "Want to help?"